Honey Bees Attracted to Glyphosate and a Common Fungicide

By Dan Nosowitz

All species evolve over time to have distinct preferences for survival. But with rapidly changing synthetic chemicals, sometimes animals don't have a chance to develop a beneficial aversion to something harmful.

New research from the University of Illinois indicates that honey bees—which are dying en masse—may actually prefer the taste of flowers laced with pesticides that are likely harmful. The study tested honey bee consumption of different sugar syrups, some plain and some with different concentrations of common pesticides. They found that while the bees didn't care for syrup with extremely high concentrations of pesticides, at low levels, the bees flocked to those pesticides.

Among the pesticides tested were the ever-controversial glyphosate, the most common pesticide in the U.S., which previous studies have also shown to be attractive to honey bees. Chlorothalonil, which is ranked as the 10th most commonly used fungicide in the U.S., usually on peanuts and potatoes, also proved to attract more honey bees. (The connection between fungicides and honey bee health is not that clear; studies suggest they are not in themselves highly toxic, but in combination with other factors can be dangerous).

The bees did not universally prefer adulterated syrups; the researchers note that they avoided prochloraz, a fungicide sold under the name Sportak. And of course, laced sugar syrup is not the same as a flower in the wild. Still, it's another alarming bit of news about our bees.

How could anyone shoot a dolphin? A dolphin that washed up dead in Manhattan Beach, California died from a bullet wound, according to local animal rescue workers.

Earlier this month, Peter Wallerstein, the founder of Marine Animal Rescue, responded to a call about a stranded dolphin on the surf, according to NBC News. By the time he arrived at the scene, the marine mammal was dead.

We adopted Amelia as a young turkey into our sanctuary from a local farmer. She lived with us for five years until her legs gave out, and we had to call our veterinarian to put her to rest, surrounded by her friends in the yard. Until then she hung out happily with the chickens and ducks, and when people visited, she'd fan out her white tail feathers and stroll amiably beside them.

Americans celebrate the winter holidays in many ways, which typically include an abundance of food, drinks, desserts—and waste. Food waste is receiving increasing attention from managers, activists, policymakers and scholars, who call it a global social problem. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, wealthy nations waste nearly as much food every year as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa.

Efforts to reduce food waste tend to focus on consumption practices, with less attention to the production and distribution side. But according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a large proportion of food loss and waste in the U.S. occurs at the farm-to-retail level, with about 133 billion pounds of food available at retailers going uneaten.

An estimated 250,000 liters (66,000 gallons) of
crude spilled from the SeaRose FPSO, a floating production, storage and offloading vessel, in the White Rose oil and gas field off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Husky Energy, the operator responsible, said the spill happened on Friday when the SeaRose FPSO "experienced a loss of pressure" in an oil flowline, according to the Canadian Press.

On Saturday, More than 6,000 climate activists shut down five bridges in Central London. The protest, organized under the banner of Extinction Rebellion to call for urgent action on climate change, was the first to intentionally block the bridges "in living memory," the group reported.